Dead Man on the Moon (9 page)

"Oh?" Linus leaned over the table despite himself.

"When you die, the muscles of your chest settle, forcing most of the air out of your lungs," Karen explained. "Eventually the space inside the thorax equalizes with the outside pressure. As a result, exposure to vacuum doesn't cause dead lungs to rupture. Unconscious or dead people don't try to hold their breath, you see, and the air rushes out the mouth and nose with minimal damage—beyond the eventual effects of vacuum, anyway. So young Noah's theory was correct. Our victim was alive and fighting when he died, and it was definitely exposure to vacuum—explosive decompression—that killed him."

"Great work, K," Linus said.

"Thank you, good sir," she replied cheekily. Was that a hint of blush on her face? Linus wasn't sure. "But we still don't know who he is."

Linus thought a moment, then went to the computer again. "Let me double-check what I remember. I said there were no outstanding missing person cases on Luna, but I've only been here a few years."

"You think perhaps someone's been missing for longer than that?"

"Maybe." Linus tapped keys and the display flashed. "Let me see if . . . aha! Two cases, right here."

Karen came over to look, and Linus smelled lilacs again. "Linus, both of those are from Sueyin Dai's time, when the UN was in charge and this place was just called Luna Base. And both missing people went out with vacuum suits on."

"The killer could have taken the victim out of the vac suit after the murder."

"No, love. Remember the frat boy? The inside of his suit was a block of ice. The water had been sucked from his body, and then it froze around him. The suit kept the water from evaporating right away, just like a block of meat left in a freezer bag for too long. If our lad on the table there had died with his suit on, the killer would have had to chop him out of the ice block to remove him from it, and that would definitely have left traces."

'Traces like broken bones?" Linus asked.

"Traces like severed limbs," Karen said. "And if the killer waited for the ice to sublimate before removing the suit. . . well, that would take a long time. There would have been missing limbs again because the corpse would have been freeze-dried and brittle by then, as Noah showed us. Bits would have broken off during the removal process. Our lad there definitely didn't die inside a vacuum suit. These two—" she gestured at the screen "—definitely did."

Linus sighed. "You're right. I'm just running out of ideas."

"I've sent the DNA sequence to law enforcement agencies in America and the European Union," Karen said. "But I don't have high hopes. Most countries only keep DNA records of criminals. If our lad has a record, we might find him, but otherwise ..." She shrugged. "We don't even have a good image of him. His face is so dried and twisted that his own mum wouldn't recognize him."

"Yeah," Linus said. He turned back to the corpse and looked down at the taut, dry skin pulled across the nearly bare skull. Who was this man? What hobbies had he had? Who had he loved and who had loved him? And most importantly, what did he really look like?

Karen mimed flipping him a coin. "Penny for those thoughts."

"I just came back from computer programming," Linus said slowly, "but I think it's time to get hold of someone in computer graphics."

Irish folk music blasted through Noah's helmet as he looked down at the footprints forever frozen on the lunar sand. With the music going, it was easier to forget about the vacuum around him and concentrate on his job. So far he had found and marked footprints from seven different people, not counting him, Linus, and Dr. Fang. All of them were within twenty-five meters of the body. Noah wondered how many people had passed by, not realizing a corpse lay hidden in the icy shade.

He was about to start the casting process when a jaw-cracking yawn split his face. Noah checked the time and was startled to discover it was almost midnight, local time. When had he last slept? The crime scene shouted for him to finish, but suddenly Noah was just too tired and too fed up to continue. Deliberately he turned his back on it and made his way back up to the lip of the crater.

Half an hour later, he was back at the door to his new apartment. He slipped quietly inside, sure that Jake and Wade would be asleep in the bedroom, leaving Noah the couch for tonight. Noah didn't much care—he was tired enough to sleep on a bag of cement. To his surprise, he found Jake dozing upright on the sofa. A dim line of light limned the bottom of the bedroom door and the place smelled of stale fried food.

"Jake?" Noah murmured. "What's going on?"

Jake roused himself and blinked up at Noah with weary brown eyes. "Hmm? Oh. Hey, Noah."

"What's going on? You look as wiped as I feel."

"Wade's using the bedroom," Jake yawned. "I'm waiting for him to finish. It's been a while, though."

Noah checked his watch. Quarter to one. "What do you mean 'using the bedroom'?"

"You know. He's . . .
entertaining."

Noah eyed the door. Faint rhythmic sounds emanated from it. "How long has he been in there?"

"Two hours, give or take."

Two hours?
Noah felt his jaw drop in disbelief. "Does he do that a lot?"

"Enough."

"Jesus, it's almost one o'clock. It's not fair for him to tie up the bedroom like that."
Without inviting his roommates,
a treacherous part of his mind added.

"Yeah, well, Wade usually gets what he wants around here."

Noah closed his eyes. He did
not
need this. Right now, he just wanted to lose consciousness on something relatively soft and unmoving. Roommate conflicts he didn't need. And who the hell did
anything
for two hours, anyway?

Options flickered across Noah's fatigued mind. A lifetime of being the middle child among seven had taught him that some people were simply selfish and would take advantage of anyone who let them, and Noah had long ago stopped letting them. So sitting in the living room with Jake wasn't a possibility. On the other hand, it was entirely possible Wade thought no one minded his bedroom monopoly be-
cause no one had challenged it. So just barging in wasn't really fair. A glance at Jake, who had clearly sat on the sofa for two hours doing nothing, told Noah not to expect any help there. He finally stepped up to the door and rapped sharply on it. His knuckles stung.

"Hey, Wade," he called. "Ten minutes, and then we're coming in."

No response from the bedroom. The noises continued. Shadows flickered across the line of light. Noah leaned against the wall with his eye on the clock. Jake sat on the couch, watching with a sort of horrified interest. Five minutes passed and Noah rapped on the door again.

"Five minutes, guy."

Still no response. When the allotted time had passed, Noah took a breath and shoved the door open.

The bedroom was atangle with naked arms and legs. Several sets of clothes lay strewn across the floor. It took Noah a moment to sort out that Wade had three guests—two female and one male. All of them were piled on one bed. Wade, his pale, naked torso streaming with sweat, sat up from under a pile of people and swore. The two female guests cried out and dove for the clothing. The male rolled onto the floor with a soft thump. Breasts and buttocks bounced slowly in the low gravity.

"What the fuck are you—?" Wade snarled.

"I gave you two warnings," Noah said. "Find someplace else to party."

The male, who had curly brown hair, a mustache, and small green eyes, sat on the floor with his folded his arms across his chest and said, "You can't just stomp in here, asshole. You can't just—"

Thirty seconds later, he and the two women were standing in a pile of clothes in the sunlit hallway. Noah slammed the door on them and turned to face an outraged Wade, who had yanked on a pair of shorts. The remnants of his erection made a ridiculous-looking tent pole in the loose fabric.

"You fucking asshole!" Wade screamed. He drew back a fist. "I'm gonna—"

Noah didn't even think. He grabbed Wade's wrist, spun him around, and shoved him face-first into the wall with his arms twisted behind him. Wade's skin was hot and sweaty, and Noah's own skin crawled at the contact. He was vaguely aware of Jake staring at him in the background.

"That's assault on an officer," Noah murmured quietly in Wade's ear.

"You ain't a fucking cop," Wade hissed.

"Deputized just this afternoon," Noah said. He tightened his grip. "Let me tell you what's going to happen. I'm going to forget you attacked me and let you go. No charges will be pressed. You're going to take some deep breaths and calm down. If you have a problem with me wanting to get a good eight hours' sleep every night, then you can go down to housing tomorrow morning and ask for a transfer. Clear?"

There was a long pause. Noah waited, his grip on Wade unyielding. Finally Wade growled, "Clear."

Noah instantly let go. Wade stormed back to the bedroom and slammed the door.

"Wow," Jake breathed. "You really pissed him off."

"One of us was going to lose," Noah said. "Better him than me. Would you do me a favor and toss my duffel bag out of the bedroom? I have the feeling I should take the couch tonight."

"Yeah," Jake said with a certain amount of admiration. "Sure."

Noah found a spare blanket and pillow in the hall closet, presumably left behind by the guy who used to live here. What was his name? Fred? Ted? Ned? Ned. The blanket smelled faintly of a stranger's cologne, but Noah was too tired to care if it had been recently washed. Jake had already disappeared into the bedroom. Noah undressed down to his underwear and lay down on the sofa. He had
only a few moments to notice that he didn't sink very far into the cushions before black sleep fell upon him.

"Attention! Attention! Urgent call from Linus Pavlik."

Noah rolled over, his mind foggy. This wasn't his apartment. This wasn't his bed. What the hell was going on? Then memory snapped like a rubber band. He sat up and accidentally pushed himself several inches off the sofa before floating back down to the cushions. The living room was empty and looked exactly as it had last night, except the window was showing a rich red sunrise on the tropical ocean. The bedroom door was shut. Noah told the lights to come on and slid the monocle around from its usual place at his temple. The call notice flashed again, and the time readout told him it was barely six o'clock. Noah ran his fingers through tousled chestnut hair.

"Take call," he said. "Audio only."

"Noah, it's Linus,"
the chief said, as if Noah wouldn't know.
"I need you to finish processing the outdoor crime scene this morning, and then we have a
—"

Uh oh. Noah could see it coming. Linus was one of those bosses who expected his people to be on-call twenty-four hours a day—or whatever the phrase would be up here. Except Noah wasn't on Luna to be a criminologist. He was here to be a grad student. If he didn't set the limits with Linus now, he'd end up in Security full-time and he'd never get his degree.

"Linus," he said, "I can't really work for you today."

"Excuse me?"
His tone was surprised.

Noah stifled a yawn. He should probably have felt nervous about facing down his boss, but he wasn't completely awake yet and couldn't summon the energy. "I have to meet with my advisor, register for classes, arrange access to the textbook and library databases, go food shopping, and do all the other new student stuff."

"That's why I called now,"
Linus said.
"It's not even six o'clock, so you'll have time to suit up and
—"

"No," Noah said.

There was a pause.

"I can't go out to the scene this morning," Noah continued, polite but firm. "Fm not going out in a vac suit on five hours' sleep."

"This is a murder case,"
Linus said very slowly, as though he were speaking to a three-year-old.

Noah winced and played his trump card. "Linus, according to the terms of my grant, I'm a student first and everything else second. If I work for you this morning, I'm violating the terms of my grant. And like I said—I can't go out in vacuum on five hours of sleep." He dug around in his memory, looking for a name. "Call Dr. Mayfield at the University. She's my advisor. If she says I should work this morning, I'll do it."